For more than twenty years, Concord Hospital has used the arts to help create an environment of optimal care and to support the comfort, hope, dignity and healing of its most challenged patients. Concord Hospital’s exemplary efforts and its model Therapeutic Arts and Activity Services Center, led by Alice Kinsler, set a standard for the rest of the state. By working collaboratively with medical staff, physicians and administrators, the program has developed unique strategies for connecting the arts to patients and for realizing the most beneficial outcomes. Services include bringing artwork into hospital rooms and trained visual artists and musicians to bedsides, providing expressive dance movement workshops for women with cancer and chronic illnesses, and delivering creative arts therapy for children of cancer patients.

As Anne Diefendorf of the Foundation for Health Communities stated in her support letter, “The contributions of local musicians . . . does not happen without great consideration and thoughtful planning. Whether it is the musician who is playing a harp for the patient as they transition through the stages of end of life; the playing of a piano that brings comfort and joy to the caregiver as they enter a patient’s room with a smile; or the family member who can see the expressions of their loved one with dementia, knowing there is recognition of that favorite song – these are the scenarios that play out every day at Concord Hospital.”